Manual shelf or item pricing has been the traditional method of informing consumers about the prices of a large number of different goods in retail stores. By this time-honored method, the prices are marked on the shelves, on the products themselves, or in other areas where the goods are displayed.
In the context of today's increased numbers of products, tighter inventory control and tighter profit margins, problems have arisen in this traditional system when the prices of the goods change. Changing the price of particular goods manually causes significant delays in price updating and potential errors in product pricing. Even in modern retail chain establishments such as modern grocery stores, a delay occurs when price updates from a regional headquarters are electronically communicated to the individual stores checkout scanner data base, but then cannot be made effective until new shelf price labels arrive from the printer and are manually dispersed to the relevant product shelf locations. Such delays have been shown to typically run from four to five days and sometimes exceed seven days from the time a price change decision is made at the regional level.
Product pricing errors also occur when the printed shelf price labels do not match the price contained in the store's checkout scanner price data base. This price mismatch has been a principal source of customer complaint and discontent. Further, the need to continually and manually update shelf pricing labels by the printing process limits the amount and quality of product information which can be placed on a shelf label. Store customers often have a difficult time matching a product with a totally computer-generated shelf price label that has only a UPC code, a block-letter description and a price. When customers cannot find a shelf price label for a given product, they may not purchase the product, or may again become dissatisfied with the store.
More recently, several schemes have been suggested for creating electronic shelf pricing information modules. These systems almost invariably involve a hardwire connection from the individual electronic display modules to a central store computer, or via an interim link. Not surprisingly, the expense associated with installing and maintaining such hardwire systems has precluded their economic viability.
A need therefore exists in the industry to replace a large majority of the printing and manual label placement activity in the current price change cycle by an electronic method that is inexpensive and flexible enough to be economically viable. A further need exists in the industry to tie the shelf price into an electronically updated check-out scanner price data base, particularly as maintained in an off-site regional computer. Yet another need in the industry has arisen for quick and economical distribution of non-pricing information for each product, such as facts about the product or notices of special sales.